The Assassination Bureau, Ltd.

4

“So you are Ivan Dragomiloff?”

Winter Hall paused a moment to glance curiously around at the book-lined walls and back again to the colorless blond in the black skullcap, who had not risen to greet him.

“I must say access to you is made sufficiently difficult. It leads one to believe that the—er—work of your Bureau is performed discreetly as well as capably.”

Dragomiloff smiled the ghost of a pleased smile.

“Sit down,” he said, indicating a chair that faced him and that threw the visitor’s face into the light.

Again Hall glanced around the room and back at the man before him.

“I am surprised,” was Hall’s comment.

“You expected low-browed ruffians and lurid melodrama, I suppose?” Dragomiloff queried pleasantly.

“No, not that. I knew too keen a mind was required to direct the operations of your—er—institution.”

“They have been uniformly successful.”

“How long have you been in business?—if I may ask.”

“Eleven years, actively—though there was preparation and elaboration of the plan prior to that.”

“You don’t mind talking with me about it?” was Hall’s next query.

“Certainly not,” came the answer. “As a client, you are in the same boat with me. Our interests are identical. And, since we never blackmail our clients after the transaction is completed, our interests remain identical. A little important information can do no harm, and I don’t mind saying that I am rather proud of this organization. It is, as you say, and if I immodestly say so myself, capably directed.”

“But I can’t understand,” Hall exclaimed. “You are the last person in the world I should conceive of as being at the head of a band of murderers.”

“And you are the last person in the world I should expect to find here seeking the professional services of such a person,” was the dry counter. “I like your looks. You are strong, honest, unafraid, and in your eyes is that undefinable yet unmistakable tiredness of the scholar. You read a great deal, and study. You are as remarkably different from my regular run of clients as I am, obviously, from the person you expected to meet at the head of a band of murderers. Though executioners is the better and truer description.”

“Never mind the name,” Hall answered. “It does not reduce my surprise that you should be conducting this—er—enterprise.”

“Ah, but you scarcely know how we conduct it.” Dragomiloff laced and interlaced his strong, lean fingers and meditated for further answer. “I might explain that we conduct our trade with a greater measure of ethics than our clients bring to us.”

“Ethics!” Hall burst into laughter.

“Yes, precisely; and I’ll admit it sounds funny in connection with an Assassination Bureau.”

“Is that what you call it?”

“One name is as good as another,” the head of the Bureau went on imperturbably. “But you will find, in patronizing us, a keener, a more rigid standard of right-dealing than in the business world. I saw the need of that at the start. It was imperative. Organized as we were, outside the law, and in the very teeth of the law, success was only to be gained by doing right. We have to be right with one another, with our patrons, with everybody, and everything. You have no idea the amount of business we turn away.”

“What!” Hall cried. “And why?”

“Because it would not be right to transact it. Don’t laugh, please. In fact, we of the Bureau are all rather fanatical when it comes to ethics. We have the sanction of right in all that we do. We must have that sanction. Without it we could not last very long. Believe me, this is so. And now to business. You have come here through the accredited channels. You can have but one errand. Whom do you want executed?”

“You don’t know?” Hall asked in wonderment.

“Certainly not. That is not my branch. I spend no time drumming up trade.”

“Perhaps, when I give you the man’s name, you will not find that sanction of right. It seems you are judge as well as executioner.”

“Not executioner. I never execute. It is not my branch. I am the head. I judge—locally, that is—and other members carry out the orders.”

“But suppose these others should prove weak vessels?”

Dragomiloff looked very pleased.

“Ah, that was the rub. I studied it a long time. Almost as conclusively as anything else, it was that very thing that made me see that our operations could be conducted only on an ethical basis. We have our own code of right, and our own law. Only men of the highest ethical nature, combined with the requisite physical and nervous stamina, are admitted to our ranks. As a result, almost fanatically are our oaths observed. There have been weak vessels—several of them.” He paused and seemed to ponder sadly. “They paid the penalty. It was a splendid object lesson to the rest.”

“You mean—?”

“Yes; they were executed. It had to be. But it is very rarely necessary with us.”

“How do you manage it?”

“When we have selected a desperate, intelligent, and reasonable man—this selecting, by the way, is done by the members themselves, who, rubbing shoulders everywhere with all sorts of men, have better opportunity than I for meeting and estimating strong characters. When such a man is selected, he is tried out. His life is the pledge he gives for his faithfulness and loyalty. I know of these men, and have the reports on them. I rarely see them, unless they rise in the organization, and by the same token very few of them ever see me.

“One of the first things done is to give a candidate an unimportant and unremunerative murder—say, a brutal mate of some ship, or a bullying foreman, a usurer, or a petty grafting politician. It is good for the world to have such individuals out of it, you know. But to return. Every step of the candidate in this, his first killing, is so marked by us that a mass of testimony is gathered sufficient to convict him before any court in this land. And the affair is so conducted that this testimony proceeds from outside persons. We would not have to appear. For that matter, we have never found it necessary to invoke the country’s law for the castigation of a member.

“Well, when this initial task has been performed, the man is one of us, tied to us body and soul. After that he is thoroughly educated in our methods—”

“Does ethics enter into the curriculum?” Hall interrupted to ask.

“It does, it does,” was the enthusiastic response. “It is the most important thing we teach our members. Nothing that is not founded on right can endure.”

“You are an anarchist?” the visitor asked with sharp irrelevance.

The Chief of the Assassination Bureau shook his head.

“No; I am a philosopher.”

“It is the same thing.”

“With a difference. For instance, the anarchists mean well; but I do well. Of what use is philosophy that cannot be applied? Take the old-country anarchists. They decide on an assassination. They plan and conspire night and day, at last strike the blow, and are almost invariably captured by the police. Usually the person or personage they try to kill gets off unscathed. Not so with us.”

“Don’t you ever fail?”

“We strive to make failure impossible. Any member who fails, because of weakness or fear, is punished with death.” Dragomiloff paused solemnly, his pale blue eyes shining with an exultant light. “We have never had a failure. Or course, we give a man a year in which to perform his task. Also, if it be a big affair, he is given assistants. And I repeat, we have never had a failure. The organization is as near perfect as the mind of man can make it. Even if I should drop out of it, die suddenly, the organization would run on just the same.”

“Do you draw any line at accepting commissions?” Winter Hall asked.

“No; from emperor and king down to the humblest peasant—we accept them all, if—and it is a big if—if their execution is decided to be socially justifiable. And, once we have accepted payment, which is in advance, you know, and have decided it to be right to make a certain killing, that killing takes place. It is one of our rules.”

As Winter Hall listened, a wild idea flashed into his mind. So whimsical was it, so almost lunatic, that he felt immeasurably fascinated by it.

“You are very ethical, I must say,” he began, “a—what I might call—ethical enthusiast.”

“Or monstrosity,” Dragomiloff added pleasantly. “Yes, I have quite a penchant that way.”

“Anything you conceive to be right, that thing you will do.”

Dragomiloff nodded affirmation, and a silence fell, which he was the first to break.

“You have some one in mind whom you wish removed. Who is it?”

“I am so curious,” was the reply, “and so interested, that I should like to approach it tentatively . . . you know, in arranging the terms of the bargain. You surely must have a scale of prices, determined, of course, by the position and influence of . . . of the victim.”

Dragomiloff nodded.

“Suppose it were a king I wished removed?” Hall queried.

“There are kings and kings. The price varies. Is your man a king?”

“No; he is not a king. He is a strong man, but not of noble title.”

“He is not a president?” Dragomiloff asked quickly.

“No; he holds no official position whatever. In fact, he is a man in private life. For what sum will you guarantee the removal of a man in private life?”

“For such a man it would be less difficult and hazardous. He would come cheaper.”

“Not so,” Hall urged. “I can afford to be generous in this. It is a very difficult and hazardous commission I am giving you. He is a man of powerful mind, of infinite wit and recourse.”

“A millionaire?”

“I do not know.”

“I would suggest forty thousand dollars as the price,” the head of the Bureau concluded. “Of course, on learning his identity, I may have to increase that sum. On the other hand, I may decrease it.”

Hall drew bills of large denomination from his pocketbook, counted them, and handed them to the other.

“I imagined you did business on a currency basis,” he said, “and so I came prepared. And, now, as I understand it, you will guarantee to kill—”

“I do no killing,” Dragomiloff interrupted.

“You will guarantee to have killed any man I name.”

“That is correct, with the proviso, of course, that an investigation shows his execution to be justifiable.”

“Good. I understand perfectly. Any man I name, even if he should be my father, or yours?”

“Yes; though as it happens I have neither father nor son.”

“Suppose I named myself?”

“It would be done. The order would go forth. We have no concern with the whims of our clients.”

“But suppose, say tomorrow or next week, I should change my mind?”

“It would be too late.” Dragomiloff spoke with decision.

“Once an order goes forth it can never be recalled. That is one of the most necessary of our rules.”

“Very good. However, I am not the man.”

“Then who is he?”

“The name men know him by is Ivan Dragomiloff.”

Hall said it quietly enough, and just as quietly was it received.

“I want better identification,” Dragomiloff suggested.

“He is a native of Russia, I believe. I know he is a resident of New York City. He is blond, remarkably blond, and of just about your size, height, weight, and age.”

Dragomiloff’s pale-blue eyes looked long and steadily at his visitor. At last he spoke.

“I was born in the province of Valenko. Where was your man born?”

“In the province of Valenko.”

Again Dragomiloff scrutinized the other with unwavering eyes.

“I am compelled to believe that you mean me.”

Hall nodded unequivocally.

“It is, believe me, unprecedented,” Dragomiloff went on. “I am puzzled. Frankly, I cannot understand why you want my life. I have never seen you before. We do not know each other. I cannot guess at the remotest motive. At any rate, you forget that I must have a sanction of right before I order this execution.”

“I am prepared to furnish it,” was Hall’s answer.

“But you must convince me.”

“I am prepared to do that. It was because I divined you to be what you called yourself, an ethical monstrosity, that I conceived this proposition and made it to you. I believe, if I can prove to you the justification of your death, that you will carry it out. Am I right?”

“You are right.” Dragomiloff paused, and then his face lighted up with a smile. “Of course, that would be suicide, and you know that this is an Assassination Bureau.”

“You would give the order to one of your members. As I understand, under pledge of his own life he would be compelled to carry out the order.”

Dragomiloff looked even pleased.

“Very true. It goes to show how perfect is the machine I have created. It is fitted to every contingency, even to this most unexpected one developed by you. Come. You interest me. You are original. You have imagination, fantasy. Pray show me the ethical sanction for my own removal from this world.”

“Thou shalt not kill,” Hall began.

“Pardon me,” came the interruption. “We must get a basis for this discussion, which I fear will quickly become academic. The point is, you must prove to me that I have done such wrong that my death is right. And I am to be judge. What wrong have I done? What person, not a wrong-doer, have I ordered executed? In what way have I violated my own sanctions of right conduct, or even have done wrong blunderingly or unwittingly?”

“I understand, and I change my discourse accordingly. First, let me ask if you were responsible for the death of John Mossman?”

Dragomiloff nodded.

“He was a friend of mine. I had known him all my life. There was no evil in him. He harmed no one.”